I have to thank Tomas O’Leary at Passive House Academy for this one. He came up with the ASS acronym recently. If you’re on site with a low-energy build then you’re going to need an Airtight Sealing Specialist – ASS. Sounds good. It’s a great hook for remembering this critical role on site.
As usual, this got me thinking. I’ve been involved in several projects where there have been some fantastic airtight sealing specialists. They’ve worked minor miracles to seal electrical and mechanical penetrations, complicated junction geometry and structural members that really insisted on making (sealing) life hell. It takes a special kind of person to do this work. They need to be patient, tolerant, forgiving, meticulous, stubborn, persistent and respected ! Now, I don’t know about you but the last time that I looked around a building site there were too many of these people around.
That said, I think that there is a bit of a problem here. I feel that everybody else on the build thinks that there’s no need for them to worry about airtightness. They can all carry on as before and the ASS will take care of all of the sealing once he comes to site. I believe that this is the prevailing mindset in the construction industry at the moment. If near zero energy building is going to become genuinely mainstream then we need to we need another type of ASS – an Airtight Sealing Strategist !
This guy will need to look at the big picture. My guess is that he will need to come from the design team. He will need to understand the needs of the electrical and mechanical installation, window installation, structural engineering and building design. And he needs to know his stuff when it comes to airtightness – a big red line pulled around a section drawing just doesn’t cut it.
The on-site airtightness sealing specialist should not need to be the miracle worker that he regularly needs to be today. Having an airtight sealing strategist in the design team will make his life easier. This will undoubtedly result in less materials required, less time on site and better sealing performance. Saving money for the client while giving better performance – woohoo !
Finally, while everyone on the construction team doesn’t need to be an airtight sealing specialist they do need to be aware of how their work impacts the sealing of the building. The more progressive building contractors are already integrating this into their tool-box talks.